Face Off: Hulu dominates with instant releases

With the rise of media streaming over the past decade, Netflix has become the dominant streaming service. While this popularity growth provided an expansive digital media library at an economical rate, the streaming giant Netflix has also usurped a contentious monopoly over the streaming industry.

When companies like Netflix are the only option available for streaming, the industry fails to generate competitive sources that push providers towards innovation and upgraded features. Hulu challenges Netflix by incorporating services that offer more to customers than one dominating company.

While Netflix is the more common, established streaming service, Hulu stands tall as an advantageous alternative for customers interested in exploring different options.

Hulu has a wide selection of current movies and TV shows similar to Netflix, but what’s even better is that episodes of shows get uploaded within a day of airing. Netflix traditionally does not upload the newly-released season of a TV show until the next season of the show begins.

On Netflix, titles also come and go much more frequently than with Hulu. Also, unlike Hulu, Netflix currently does not have any offers with live or cable TV.

Recently, Hulu shined with its wide availability of entire series of popular TV shows and movies, both current and from the past. Popular series on Hulu include “Parks and Recreation,” “The X-Files,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Rick and Morty,” “South Park,” “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” “30 Rock,” Scrubs” and “Seinfeld.”

It is important to note that Netflix is currently able to create more content because they already have a high user count, and therefore, they have revenue.

Based on Hulu’s threshold of about 20 million subscribers, as compared to Netflix’s 137 million, Hulu has created great original content that match the popularity and acclaim of many Netflix originals like Golden Globe winner “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Castle Rock” and “Into the Dark,” just to name a few.

What is most admirable about Hulu, however, isn’t just its success as a service charging against Netflix– it’s also Hulu’s perceptiveness and focuses towards customer interests.

As of today, a large percentage of streaming service subscribers include millennials and Gen Z customers, many of which include students and young adults. As of August of 2018, Hulu announced its official Spotify Premium partnership, a plan that provides students with Spotify Premium, Hulu’s base plan and SHOWTIME for only $4.99 a month.

By joining forces, Hulu’s decision to enter this partnership is now able to give students a complete world of music and video content, shows and film.

Even though Hulu is not currently as established as Netflix as a streaming service option, it truly holds its own and provides much-needed competition for the industry giant. Hulu is leading the streaming industry in a great direction with rewarding features and constant improvement of the customer streaming experience.